[Reproduce-devel] [task #15336] Temporary software build directory in shared memory (RAM)

[Mohammad Akhlaghi]

URL:
  <https://savannah.nongnu.org/task/?15336>

                 Summary: Temporary software build directory in shared memory
(RAM)
                 Project: Reproducible paper template
            Submitted by: makhlaghi
            Submitted on: Wed 24 Jul 2019 01:25:31 PM BST
         Should Start On: Wed 24 Jul 2019 12:00:00 AM BST
   Should be Finished on: Wed 24 Jul 2019 12:00:00 AM BST
                Category: Software
                Priority: 5 - Normal
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
        Percent Complete: 40%
             Assigned to: makhlaghi
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
                  Effort: 0.00

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Details:

The template currently unpacks the software and builds them directly in the
build directory and after installation the whole unpacked directory is
deleted. However, building the software involves the reading and writing of
millions of files, so on the long run, it can be bad for the non-volatile
memory (HDDs or SSDs), it can also be slightly slow.

To fix this, if the system has a shared-memory directory (commonly named
`/dev/shm'), we can do the temporary building of the software there. The great
thing about this unique directory is that it is actually in the RAM, not on
the HDD/SSD. This can slightly improve the speed (not much probably), but more
importantly it will not do any long-term harm to the host's HDDs/SSDs.

I am working on a tiny change so when a `/dev/shm' exists, the
`.build/software/build-tmp' directory actually becomes a symbolic link to a
directory under `/dev/shm'. Since we have just changed a directory to a
symbolic link, this won't cause any change to the way we use this directory
during the building of the software :-D.




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